He was struggling to communicate with the other kids – as his
speech was behind their, his ability to play, participate and interact with the
other kids was difficult. He would get annoyed because not only could they not
understand what he was trying to say, but he was frustrated that he himself
couldn’t find the right words to communicate effectively so that the teachers
and kids could understand him. He would feel left out and as a result he would
act up and do things he knew were naughty just to get the attention he was
seeking. In his mind, negative attention was better than no attention. He would
physically lash out and soon became the child all the other children would not
play with to avoid getting hurt
We tried everything we could think of – another 18 months
and things weren’t really looking up. In 2011, the year he turned 6 he entered
kindergarten. Within the first month the school called me in and said they
could see there were issues and that they would like us to have him tested and
investigations done.
Firstly we enrolled him in speech therapy weekly to assist
with learning letters and words and sounds so that he didn’t fall behind in
class. We had his hearing tested – perfect. We had his eye sight tested,
perfect. He had bloods taken to see if he perhaps had an imbalance of
something, nothing wrong, all levels perfect.
He started off year 1 at the bottom level for everything, He
was placed with a teacher who ran a special reading program for children who
were struggling – she had had much success with children with reading
difficulties. Unfortunately this teacher
disliked James from the very first day. She took a hard approach of negative
comments and chastising for his inability to achieve the levels she needed him
to. His entire day was spent listening to this adult woman throwing negativity
at him for 6 hours a day. Very quickly
we started noticing our happy little boy, disappearing. We were later to learn that this teacher was
going through chemotherapy and was using James as her outlet for her
frustrations of feeling ill at work.
It was at this point that our speech therapies suggested we
take James to a developmental paediatrician to have him assessed for other
possible issues that could potentially be rectified. One assessment later and
we were advised that our son was very much on the ADHD spectrum. Although
extremely against medication, I decided to do what the doctor felt was best for
our son. 2 days later and it felt like our little boy had been given back to
us.
It’s now been 3 years since that initial diagnosis and we’ve
had much success with Concerta, but we do feel that things are very slowly
slipping away from us once again. As James gets older we’re finding the areas
of struggles are becoming broader but his reactions seem to remain constant.
What I mean is that besides the constant struggles to have him eat and sleep,
his mood swings seem to have become more prominent and noticeable.
We find his emotions are being driven more by his mood than
by impulse. He lives most of his life in a state of movement – in that he is
mostly unable to relax, slow down, eat or sleep and then there are days where
he hardly moves at all. We are seeing so much more of the explosive angry reactions
that he used to have, mood shifts without warning and such extremely
contrasting moods, we’re often left baffled as to what just happened. We used to joke that he could go from sad to
happy in 2 seconds flat, but it seems he is doing more of the average mood to
angry then to sad in 2 seconds flat.
He is struggling with homework. Despite sitting with him
every single day and going through his homework (spelling and maths) he just cannot
seem to do this on his own. His handwriting is illegible at the best of
times. When I sit with him and ‘do’ the
work ‘with’ him he has no problem completing the work – his struggles come in
mostly when he has to self-regulate getting through the work – he simply
cannot. If I leave him to it, he ends up in tears and totally shuts down
This past weekend he had a short assignment to complete on the
Great Barrier reef and his choice of 1 animal found there. We endured hours of
him coming back to us stating that he simply didn’t know what to do or where to
find the information. We persisted because we felt this was his ploy to getting
back to playing games on his PC. He tried every trick up his sleeve to get out
of doing the project – positive coaching, much direction and suggestion –
eventually I had to sit with him ad do the work with him, which he managed to
get through then without any hassle. I won’t always be able to help him like
this with his work – he needs to learn to do this sort of work on his own.
A few hours prior to this, I decided that his bedroom, the
ever present elephant in the room, needed to be cleaned out because I was
worried there may be national hazard to health growing in there. I had him empty out his entire closet of all
the storage boxes (which separates all his toys) line then down the passage and
the begin sorting out toys into their correct boxes. Previously this sort of job would have taken
him all day and we would have endured several meltdowns and crying but
yesterday he managed to complete the entire exercise within an hour and a half –
perfectly.
We are struggling with how sometimes he can do a job or task
so easily and then the next time it becomes the mountain we can’t get over.
He is having similar issues at school – some days he has
great learning days but lately, most days are not. Socially he has major issues
with mixing with peers and making friends as well as playing games without
having a meltdown. I guess for the most
part, school feel as we do, that we are consistently trying to help him help
himself but there are days when he just seems disinterested in doing so for
himself and it is extremely frustrating. We are all making accommodations for
his ‘issues’ but it’s beginning to feel a bit like “give him a hand and he’ll
take an arm”
At school I have initiated a few things to assist him, such
as fidgets for when he can’t sit still, a bean bag ‘time out zone’ for when he
quite simply just needs 5 minutes of quiet time when he is struggling with the
loud noise that is school. The teacher
also regularly utilises him to run messages to the office to give him not only
a break from the work, but an excuse to work off some of the excess energy. I
have provided list upon list to the teacher regarding how best to handle him in
the classroom and on the playground.
Honestly we’ve all reached a point of exhaustion that none
of us seems to be able to break the surface of with James.
James is such an amazing kid. He is extremely creative and
loves to draw. Very slowly we’ve been working on his tolerance of music because
I know how calming It can be listening to music which I think he can benefit
from. He is excessively loving and caring and would defend with his life,
family and friends that he felt he could protect. He is quite emotional and
feels empathy deeply. He dislikes disappointment,
his own and others to such an extent that he will punish himself without
thought for making someone feel that way.
I’ve found the best way to tackle any and all situations, the good and
bad ones, in a positive manner. Rather than focusing on what he has done wrong,
we try to think about and work on what he could do right next time. Shouting,
blame and punishment simply result in him shutting down which then takes hours
to wean him out of.
I have found that given the opportunity, James will talk
about anything and everything. He will ‘milk’ any situation for attention. A stubbed toe will result in him telling
people his leg is about to fall off. An incident that occurred last week will
suddenly play on his mind that he will then force himself to cry about how that
situation upset him, simply to get the attention of teachers. We don’t allow
for this at home at all and as such a lot of what happens at school only
happens at school. On Friday last week he was rubbing a leaf on his face during
recess which he then ‘milked’ for a trip to sick bay with an ice pack during
lesson time. When I asked him about it, he immediately jumped on the defensive
stating that he had told them the itchy face was not from the leaves and that
he didn’t want to go to sick bay for the ice pack, despite him actually doing
this. It’s almost as if he uses hindsight (his mother’s voice of reason) to try
and talk himself out of trouble.
I read recently that ADHD kids are prone to telling lies
because it’s their immediate reaction to being asked a question as their brain
hasn’t had enough time to process the correct answer. I pointed this out to him and now whenever I
ask him something and I know his response was a lie, I remind him to take a few
seconds to think about his answer and thus far it’s been 100% effective. Problem
is I can’t always be around him to remind him to do this and as a result the
fibbing still continues when I’m not around.
Our house feels like it is being overrun by lists. He has
lists on his door, on the fridge behind the front door etc. These visual cues
seem to work for a few days but realistically I’ve wasted time putting them
together and sticking them up. It went from me reminding him to do xyz to
reminding him to check off his list – it really hasn’t made any difference to
his ability to get anything completed on time or properly.
James’s currency seems to be electronics and games. We have a no technology rule from Monday to
Thursday in our house – not even the TV gets turned on. This doesn’t mean that
he abides by this. Often we will find him sneaking into our room at night to
retrieve my phone or the ipad which we’ve tried to keep away from him. On a
Friday afternoon after school he knows that if he gets through his chores, he
can then play computer games until I get home from work. (about 2 hours) In this
situation, all chores are done with no hassle – why can’t he be like this all
the time?!
We allow our boys 6 hours of technology time for the entire
weekend – this includes computer games, TV/DVD watching/ phone time. They have
to keep a time card of the time they spend, which we were hoping would assist
not only with their time management but would also limit their technology use. Our major difficulty with James is that unless
someone is actively checking on his usage, he will simply play all day and then
act like he had no idea he had gone over time. He always has an excuse. Our
other matter is that we have a 14 year old who uses his computer for homework
and assignments on weekends (he is inattentive ADHD) and at present we are
regulating their technology use equally because of their constant comparison of
time usage between themselves which is causing major arguments between them.
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